The Book of Ruth

Is Ruth Naomi Floyd being held down by the same thing that lifts her up?

by A.D. Amorosi

When singer-composer Ruth Naomi Floyd and manager-producer Keith R. McKinley began working together 14 years ago, they knew the road ahead would be rocky.

CHURCH IS STATE: "Is there anything so secular that it can't be sacred?" ponders Ruth Naomi Floyd. "For me, the answer is no." Photo By: Michael T. Regan (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

They were devout Christians. They understood adversity.

Besides, Floyd came from an activist family of crusading ministers. She works with HIV/AIDS patients. McKinley is a music-biz veteran who's worked with Gary Thomas and Geri Allen. He's drawn up riders and dealt with artist egos.

They knew from trial and tribulation, and had — each in their own way — cleaned up their share of holy messes.

But they didn't think their mission would be impossible, putting out albums like 1999's Walk and Not Be Faint and 2002's Fan Into Flame — records with equal footing in improvisational jazz and Christian theology.

"Is there anything so secular that it can't be sacred?" ponders mezzo-soprano Floyd, 42, preparing for a day of classes at Spruce Hill Christian School where she teaches music. "For me, the answer is no."

Same goes for McKinley, 43, who started the Contour label in 1994 to release Floyd's jazz messages of unshakable faith in Jesus. He's spent years trying to find Floyd the critical attention he says her music deserves. "I've gotten crow's-feet doing this," he says.

Now, both are calling Floyd's boldly biblical, rocking new Root to the Fruit — an elegantly possessed record that moves gracefully from spirituals and sympathetic covers of Mary Lou Williams and Antonin Dvorak to hearty originals — the end of the road.

"After five records, if you don't get it, you're not going to get it," says McKinley, stifling a chuckle.

"I came up in radical way," says Floyd, an evangelical Christian whose father, the Rev. Melvin Floyd, was a Baptist minister/activist who fought gang warfare and ushered in Germantown's urban missionary movement.

"My congregation are those who need to hear the good news," says Floyd, who also acts as an adjunct professor at Philadelphia Biblical University.

When she came to McKinley about making music in 1993, he already knew Ruth. Though miles apart — he came from 54th and Baltimore — their families had known each other through various church functions since childhood. And they had faith in common. He instantly "got" the idea of merging jazz and devout lyricism — not gospel-tinged jazz or jazz-touched religious tracts.

"I was very pointed as to what I wanted to do: improvisational jazz music about my beliefs," says Floyd. "I wanted to share the unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ."

This was serious music that shared in God and jazz organically and equally. Because major labels in the '90s were dropping jazz artists — even those making profound content like Amina Claudia Myers and Henry Threadgill — McKinley chose not to subject Floyd's unique approach to that experience. They went the grassroots route and self-released her debut, Paradigms for Desolate Times, in 1994.

"She was showing respect, reverence and understanding for the art form called jazz and Christian theology," says McKinley who had previously managed Greg Osby and others within the M-Base avant-funk jazz circles.

"To dissect the Bible and defend the word of the Lord, you have to become a soldier," says McKinley. "My experience with Ruth has made me grow as Christian. I've had to study so to reflect both the faith and the history and power of jazz and of God."

From the explosive blasts of "Oh, Freedom" to the calm, watery cool of "Goodbye For Now," to the slow sway of "No Hiding Place," Root to the Fruit is a gracefully drawn, righteous road map of African-American musical experience. And her lyrics sometimes quote whole passages from the Bible.

But Floyd's music isn't just about sermons on a Sunday that make her rock back and forth and feel good. For her, it's about knowing the context and culture of God's word. She wants to translate her Jesus to all congregations — the different churches she plays throughout the country; the concert halls and bars, too.

"I'm willing to take the message to wherever they want to hear it. And wherever they don't," she laughs.

What Floyd has chosen to do — or what has chosen her — has definitely contributed to the jazz canon. If the state of jazz is such that extending itself to pop, hip-hop and such (for better or worse) means something to most critics, then Floyd has tapped into a viable new vocal repertoire based on jazz traditions and created a whole new language with theology at its base.

But for someone with such a body of work and such fascinating development, Floyd is, unlike her peers, usually ignored by the jazz press. Even when she has been dissected critically, the criticism hasn't led Floyd to become part of a larger discourse. McKinley points out that while worthy developments in jazz by the likes of Uri Caine, Cassandra Wilson and Don Byron get lauded (rightly so), and puts them in the position of better sales, gigs and hype (rightly so), Floyd gets nothing.

But why?

"People keep us out of the discussion because of our expression of Christian faith," claims McKinley.

"Our Christian content keeps us out of any discussions of contributing to jazz. It has kept us from getting grants because of our religious nature. It has kept us from getting gigs." He points out, but does not name, venues that have not taken on Floyd due to her spiritual directness. These are places, claims McKinley, that have held shows with Sufi musicians, Hassidic players and Salif Keita, whose songs are often religious in nature.

"Why is it that someone whose music is so explicitly Christian can't be offered those same sorts of shows?" asks McKinley. "After 14 years, it is clear to us. Look at what gets booked at Lincoln Center's Women in Jazz Festival or certain events in this city, and tell me it's not due to our Christian beliefs. What else would cause the media corps from being lukewarm to contextualizing the work and cause bookers to deny us performance opportunities if not for our explicit Christianity?"

Doesn't it seem strange — in a time when Cassandra Wilson can be praised for experimenting with Yoruba chants and Wayne Shorter for allowing Buddhism to seep into his music — that someone acting upon her faith in Jesus and set upon the rock of improvisational jazz music would be left to dry?

Without realizing it, I said that out loud.

"You asking me?" Floyd jokes.

There wasn't always tension between secular and spiritual songs. Floyd points out how slaves sang of devotion and faith as well as lament and lust. Louis Armstrong performed "The Old Rugged Cross" during jazz funeral marches. What's bluesier than Christ on the cross, shouting, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"

But secularism in music is as progressive as it has been in American political life. What role religious discussion and expression has in public life is what brings McKinley and Floyd together professionally.

McKinley relates a story of a jazz writer, who, after hearing Root to The Fruit, said off the record that if he addressed this CD, it would be as if he was embracing Floyd's beliefs. "But what about embracing her creating possibilities for vocal jazz music?" asks McKinley. "Who has put forth a viable jazz expression so connected to its root history?"

"And who decided that jazz must remain secular?" quizzes Floyd.

To that end, McKinley and Floyd see their grassroots existence as dead-ended, plateaued.

"Root to the Fruit is so significant to us, it's the completion of a cycle," says McKinley, "from what we had to say with songs we'd been playing forever like 'Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child' to the players we said it with. James Newton is a devout Christian. James Weidman was raised in the church. Those musicians understood that we wanted to show the relationship between the root source of jazz in the spiritual and the contemporary expression of jazz."

But it isn't just about Ruth or Root.

They want to evangelize and do it in a modern, accurate way. They want to open the door for Christian jazz musicians who want to sing and shout openly about their God.

"Christiandom is asking about how we can preserve the integrity of the gospel of Christ while pursuing the future," says McKinley.

The jazz world is asking the same question: How do we preserve the integrity of the music while remaining contemporary?

Root from the Fruit starts with a spiritual, ends with an original and talks of contrition, enslavement, peace and prosperity in between — all with Floyd's clarion vocals atop its gorgeously appointed din.

It's an exquisite record. But she's tired — of preaching, as it is. After this record, Floyd feels as if her work will take on a subtler shade of religiosity, one that doesn't use exact Scripture quotes or Bible passages to get across its good word (as she did on 1996's With New Eyes).

Her sound, perhaps, may grow more rhythmic and computer-generated.

"We didn't know people would get so funny when we started articulating our beliefs in Jesus," states Floyd. "We thought we'd be part of Wynton Marsalis' jazz democracy."

She stops. "But that's what a Christian does — defend the faith."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)